REALISTIC CFD SIMULATION OF COMPRESSIBLE FLOW INSIDE THE
CORE OF THE PEBBLE BED REACTOR HTR-10
Leorlen Y. Rojas Mazaira 1,3, Dany S. Dominguez *2, Carlos R. G. Hernández1, Abel Gámez
Rodriguez1, Carlos Alberto Brayner de Oliveira Lira3
1
Instituto Superior de Tecnologías y Ciencias Aplicadas, Av. Salvador Allende esq. Luaces – CP 10600.
La Habana, Cuba
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
2
Pós-graduação em Modelagem Computacional, Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz, Rodovia Jorge
Amado, Km 16, Salobrinho, CEP 45662-900, Ilhéus, BA, Brasil
[email protected]
3
Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Av. Luiz Freire 1000, Cid. Universitaria, CEP 50740-540, Recife,
PE, Brasil
[email protected]
ABSTRACT
High-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs) have the potential to be used as possible energy generation
sources in the near future, owing to their inherently safe performance by using a large amount of graphite,
low power density design, and high conversion efficiency. However, safety is the most important issue for
its commercialization in nuclear energy industry. It is very important for safety design and operation of an
HTGR to investigate its thermal–hydraulic characteristics. In this article, it was performed the thermal–
hydraulic simulation of compressible flow inside the core of the pebble bed reactor HTR (High
Temperature Reactor)-10 using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). The realistic approach was used,
where every closely packed pebble is realistically modelled. Due to the high computational cost is
impossible simulate the full core; therefore, the geometry used is a FCC (Face Centered Cubic) cell with
the height of the core, with a total of 42 pebbles. The input data used were taken from the thermal–
hydraulic IAEA Bechmark (1). The results show the profiles of velocity and temperature of the coolant in
the core, and the temperature distribution inside the pebbles. The maximum temperatures in the pebbles do
not exceed the allowable limit for this type of nuclear fuel.
REFERENCES
[1] IAEA-TECDOC-1694, Evaluation of High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor Performance:
Benchmark Analysis Related to the PBMR-400, PBMM, GT-MHR, HTR-10 and the ASTRA Critical
Facility, ISBN 978-92-0-137610-7, 2013.